Recruits
In this game recruits are ranked by stars, and there are walk-ons for teams that do not have all their scholarships filled(70 for DI teams). They can further be broken down into Jucos and high school players. This will try to tell you the difference in them and make the world of recruiting easier for some. High school vs. JUCO High School players are younger and will have 3-4 seasons of playing time. Generally speaking, they are a better option than JUCOs, because you will have more time to develop them, as JUCOs will only be with your team their Junior and Senior seesons. JUCOs also are generally not very good, as they (usually) are the recruits from two seasons ago that did not get recruited, either because they weren't good players or because they didn't have a GPA high enough (2.25) to play at a school. There are always a few exceptions to this rule, and some gems in the JUCO classes every season. In real life, stars usually determine how good/how much potential a recruit has to become a star player(pun intended), however, in PSE, stars do not matter. It needs to be mentioned again, STARS DO NOT MATTER in PSE. With that out of the way, the most important aspect of a potential recruit for your team is his eval and the grades which determine that eval. A good rule of thumb for most teams would be to offer any recruit that is a 65 eval or above, with the exceptions being a 65 eval recruit that has low Endurance, which would limit the amount of time said player would be on the field. Finding your recruits, now this is the fun part. You can always start with scouting the All-Star Games. Normally, a full coaching staff can get almost all of these covered and will look at the states with big populations first. The recruits are distributed according to population, so states with larger populations are going to have more recruits, but you will find the further you get from airports the guys are not looked at as much. Also, high school players come out in two bunches, and sometimes the later guys can find someone no one looked at as well. The thing is get out and look and look everywhere. You will spend a lot of time in scouting to find talent, all coaches do. Evaluations are a key for recruits and recruiting. Not every player you look at will meet what you need for your team. The lower your scouting bar, the less likely you are to get a good evaluation of a player's talent. So you might have to scout a player more than once to get what his real evaluation is. The graph in scouting a player will show you his skills levels. The further out it is the better. Think of the center as a F grade and work your way out to an A. It's just like school you want the A's and to avoid the F's. Also one last thing. You think you found a player that is a beast one the field, but a caveman in the classroom. This happens. A simple thing to remember is that a player with a 2.0 and under GPA will go to a Junior College. A player in the 2.01 to about 2.50 range will sit out a year and lose his freshman year. Normally anything over 2.50 will be able to play. Anyone with a GPA over 3.0 can start for you soon as he gets on campus. OK, now you know some things about recruits. Now it's time to use the map and find them. On your homepage you will see the travel icon under "core actions". That is how you travel in the world of Pigskin Empire. You will use this to find things such as games to scout, players to scout and job offers. We're here for recruits so that is what we're going to talk about. This area is great tool to use to find players as you can break it down many ways to find players. 1. Distance will show you all players that come up in the amount of distance you have selected in your search 2. Playing position will help if you need a player at one spot over the other as it will filter out the other positions that you are not looking for. 3. High school or Juco. You can set this to only show the high school players or Juco players. When setting up your search this will filter out what does not fit your search. 4. Interest in your school. This can be set from High to Low and will show all the players that fit you search settings. 5. Star rankings. This can be set from 5 down. Remember though, when kids first come out they might not have a star ranking. Later on it can be used to find the highest or lowest rated players in your area. Once you have set up your search and the players come up they will be listed on the right hand side of the screen 1 through 20 by distance from where you are when you set up the search. The map will also become populated with numbers. These are the locations of the recruits. Each number that comes up shows all recruits in that city and in some large cities that can be a lot. In out of the way areas this can be as few as one recruit per number. You can use the list on the right side of the page to travel to a particular place or use the map by picking the number you want to travel to and select the name when it comes up. As long as you have the time and money you will go there. The further away a town is, the longer the drive will be and the more it will cost you to travel there. Here are a few tips about scouting players that are not in your teams home area. 1. Set up a game in the area you would like to recruit. This helps you get known to the players and will get you closer to the location if it is an away game as your coach will go to the college your're playing free, no lost money or hours. When you visit these kids if it is an away game you can invite them to visit also. It helps in recruiting them as well. 2. High school all-star games are very helpful in recruiting as you will see the areas best players all at one time. These save you time as you can see the players evaluations, but if you have poor scouting skill you might want to check them more than once. 3. This is a huge task. You will need help and time. The more coaches you have the more eyes, hours, and money you will have at finding talent. These are all factors when looking for players. The more you search compared to the other guy means you might find someone he missed. Also it helps sometimes for each coach have a state to scout in to waste less time. 4. Home visits- you only get two to find out what he wants to hear and use it to land him. 5. Calls- you need to stay on top of all the players you would like to land by daily calls until they sign with you or drop you. Remember things change. Teams he has on high might land someone else so that might be your chance to land him. Be careful, not all pitches have the same effect from one player to the other. Find the two that work the best and stick with them. Well, I hope this helps you in your seasons to come in your recruiting effort.